


my love grows well (my love grows awful)

by cinnamonsnaps



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Extremely Slow Burn, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Slow Burn, Spoilers for Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Spoilers for everything, mild body horror and gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-01-31 15:59:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12685170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: Somewhere along the way, Taako picks up a miserable, parasitic disease that fills him with pain and seemingly has no cure.As if falling in love isn't bad enough, he's also got a carnivorous flower eating his lungs.Hanahaki Disease is a fictional disease through which a person with an unrequited crush begins coughing up flower petals.(mature for the mild mild gore n horror themes)





	1. Guyus Fierus

**Author's Note:**

> THERE IS VERY LIGHT GORE/BODY HORROR hence the M rating re: things growing in people, coughing up petals. most of it;s just gonna be taako being a little BITCH though  
> i'm sorry i lied he's fine and did nothing wrong

It starts at year twenty something. 

The Starblaster comes to a planet so covered in lush green plants and enormous flowers that when they fly low, a kaleidoscope of natural brilliance waves like an impressionistic painting under the path of the ship. 

It seems safe. It seems so wonderfully safe, no cold starved creatures scraping a sustenance off the frozen side of a hell planet, clean fresh air, rivers of cool water, and everywhere plants and flowers as big as buildings. This time, Taako and Magnus leave the ship to explore together, Lup and Lucretia trailing behind and examining the plant life together. 

As Lucretia fills up her notebooks with botanical sketches, and Lup conducts various tests on the flora and fauna, Magnus and Taako pull ahead a little down a natural clearing in the dense bush and discover-

 

A deep and natural pool, crystal clear with a sandy bottom and plenty of underwater plants swaying in the gentle current. 

Taako hesitantly dips a toe in. 

“Well, it doesn't seem like it's made of acid-”

“Geronimo!”

And of course, Magnus has already ripped his clothes off down to his skivvies and bombed into the pool. Taako stares, unimpressed, as he sinks and thrashes before resurfacing, spluttering and laughing, his hair plastered to his face. 

“It's kind of cold!”

“No shit,” Taako says blandly. “It looks a little nippy in there.”

As Magnus covers his nipples self-consciously, Taako slumps at the side of the pool and stares into the water mistrustfully.

“Aw, come on, jump in!” Magnus splashes Taako, and he grimaces.

“We don't know that it's safe. What if there's... What if there's like a shark in there.”

“I don't see any sharks.”

“Like, a see through shark.”

Magnus snorts and gets an expression on his face that Taako doesn't trust at all, not one bit. 

“I guess it's just me then,” Magnus says, floating onto his back and doing some lazy strokes. “Enjoying this amazing lake all by myself.”

 

It is amazing. There are only patches of blue sky seen between the high ceiling of trees, and long vines trail into the water entwined with delicate pink flowers, and strange lilies unlike any Taako has seen before bob up and down on the disturbance caused by Magnus’ swimming. 

Slowly, slowly, he relaxes.

“Careful, big guy,” he drawls, wishing he had a margarita in his hand while he relaxes poolside, “there might be something lurking under all those lily pads.”

“I don't think that's very li-” Magnus begins, and suddenly disappears underwater.

 

Taako blinks.

 

“Nice prank,” he calls out, but the water is still, and only a few lily pads stir as if jostled underwater.

“Magnus. Magnus, c'mon.” Taako gets to his feet, ignoring the creeping discomfort, the hysterical notion that something bad has happened - and if it has, so what? Taako doesn't care, as long as it doesn't affect him.

“This isn't- I'm not going in there for love nor money, so rusewise this dog won't hunt-”

No answer. No Magnus. Only calm, still water, two or three concentric rings expanding slowly, and the rustling silence of the vast jungle. 

Without thinking, Taako conjures Mage Hand and looks into the water through the reeds and lilies, ready to pull Magnus out, even though it's his own damn fault.

“Magn-”

A  _ thing _ lunges out the water and tackles him and it's on his leg, it's pulling him, and Taako lets out an undignified yelp and aims a Magic Missile directly at the eye of his opponent-

“Ow!”

And Magnus lets go of his leg to clutch his eye, and thank the gods Taako flubbed his attack roll because otherwise that eye would be mush now. 

“You ASSHOLE-” Taako yells, before promptly sliding down the bank into the water and swallowing a lungful on the way down. 

Almost immediately, there's a firm grip on his arm and he's being pulled up quickly, and Magnus holds him close and lets Taako cough it all out like a sick dog.

“I'm sorry,” Magnus says as Taako calls him every curse under the suns with his few gasping breaths, and there's a strong hand smacking his back to get all the water out which really is just making him feel worse, and he's still being held close to Magnus, the big dumb wall of flesh.

“You really- you really fucking goofed that one, you useless dickhole! You really did me with that one, really frazzled ol’ Taako's jimmies-”

Taako realises that Magnus is wheezing. He's wheezing from laughter. His big chest bounces with it, and in turn bounces Taako. 

“I'm sorry- I'm sorry-” he wheezes. Taako hammers at his chest with his fists, frustrated, annoyed, absolutely determined not to start laughing too. 

“I'm putting a fucking curse on you. I'm cursing you eternally. May all your food be oversalted. I hope you step on a sharp rock. I curse your dick to be really small and shaped like fantasy Guy Fieri.”

Magnus sobers immediately. “No, please. Not Guyus Fierus. Anyone but that.’

“You know you deserve it, you miserable worm.” Taako crawls onto the grass and lies down, looking up into the canopy of leaves, and Magnus crawls and lies beside him. “You're in the eternal dog house.”

“Aw, sweet.”

“No, fuck you. No dogs allowed in the dog house.”

“Awww.”

And Taako looks across at Magnus, and he-

He's a boy. He's such a young human boy, and it's hard to process that after two decades of companionship, but Magnus is so young and alive and unafraid to feel or do, damn the consequences. Magnus isn't a very young human, but elves live a long time. To Taako and Lup, Magnus and his grinning boyish face and wet, messy hair is a rubber ball that shoots through half a lifetime without thinking, without worrying. 

Taako stands up, just about ready to head back to camp and take a long shower to wash off all this grody pond water.

“Tell the others I'm gonna stay here and swim a little longer. It's so nice here.”

“I will,” Taako says with a wave of his hand, and starts walking away - and coughs. There must still be some pond water in him, because he coughs and coughs til he's bent over, and there's something slimy forcing it's way out of his throat-

and onto the floor falls a crumpled red thing. A flower petal, Taako realises.

“You okay?” Magnus calls, worried, but Taako waves away his concern with a shaking hand.

“Yeah. Apparently I managed to swallow a whole lily when you tried to murder me. Thanks for that.”

“It's cool.”

And Taako throws away the petal, and leaves the pool behind. 

 

* * *

 

It's not too long later, and Taako is on the ship taking a nap while everyone goes off and does their own thing. This planet is a little snowy, mainly tundra and mountains and cold fjords, and the Light of Creation is nearby. The only predators are the wheeling birds that scream and dive at them if they don't travel in a tight pack, so they all went together, and left Taako behind to babysit the Starblaster. 

He stirs from his nap, feeling oddly restless, feeling a little curious. This is the first time he's been truly alone on the ship with the free time to enjoy it. It's quiet. Taako loves the quiet. Nobody hogging the toilet, nobody making a mess of the kitchen, nobody asking to borrow his shit or make him move or do a chore - and he's wasting this valuable time napping?

First, he patrols the halls. The cabins are packed in tight and well designed to make use of all space available, and he experiments with different seats in the mess cabin, and looking through the pantry at their meagre food supplies, and even sitting in the captain's chair and spinning round and round in it til the axel squeaks and spooks him. 

Taako pauses in the hall outside everyone's dorms. He checks his room - a mess, per usual, things thrown everywhere and all over the place. Next, he slides the door open into Lup's room, feeling the thrill of doing something pretty wrong but also absolutely harmless. Her room isn't much better than his. Neither of them had learned how to occupy a space properly. 

Next... next to Lup's is Lucretia's. He pokes his head in. It's clean. Clean and stark like a hotel. The desk is well organised, the bed is made, the floor is vacuumed and tidy. 

Dare he sneak a look into Merle's room? He does: but it's completely dark, and there are suggestions of wall hangings and various plants and the earthy soil smell of a greenhouse, and it's just generally really disconcerting, so he closes the door quickly. Barry's room makes him look like a fucking nerd. Taako doesn't dare look into Davenport's room.

When he gets to Magnus’ door, he hesitates, before sliding himself in. It smells well-used, warm, and his bed is messy and covered in blankets, and it looks cosy. The desk has some paper on it, but mainly has bits and pieces from different worlds and the ship itself that Magnus appears to have been tampering with. Taako examines them from afar in case they blow up or start a fire.

He draws closer to the piece of paper on the desk, quill still lying beside it making a blot on the desk, and reads the first line in Magnus’ inelegant chunky handwriting, gouged into the paper with meaning and purpose, words written with no hesitancy - the paper shows deep black gouges where Magnus changed his mind and simply inked the offending words out.

The paper reads:

 

_ Dear mom and dad _

 

Taako immediately stops reading. There's something pathetic about it, he tells himself. A grown man writing letters to a dead family they'll never see again. Don't look back with regret: forget the past, the things you can't change. Don't write it letters. 

 

He reads halfway down the page.

 

_ is as stiff as ever. The only dude he really gets on with is merle because theyre both grody old men who hate millennials. I guess i'm kind of getting along with everyone. It'd be stupid after this long to not get along but somtimes I do think I wind up taako especially. He gave me a chinese burn using his mage hands but it's just good craic. I bet he'd be fun to chill out with and crack open a cold one if he wasnt so busy pretending to not enjoy things like swimming and friendship. Lucretia is kind of quiet and sometimes I get nervous  _

 

Taako stops reading. 

He doesn't pretend to not enjoy things. He doesn't enjoy things. Especially not swimming and friendship.

But gods, there's something so sickeningly endearing about a grown man writing off a chinese burn as good craic, and writing letters to his dead family about his new friends, and writing anything at all about Taako. He does care. Magnus is everything that you see on the surface: friendly, hopeful, goofy.

It reassures Taako that Magnus won't turn around and be some evil mastermind or heartless manipulator. Everything about Magnus - his room, his diary, the way he treats Taako - feels like safety.

As soon as Taako realises this, he struggles to come to terms with it. Shit, this shouldn't be a struggle, he's known the guy for two decades, but... 

 

He should leave. Magnus could walk in at any minute and catch Taako being all weird and smooshy. Before he goes, he quickly grabs one of Magnus’ many many blankets and scarpers with it back to his room. It's so warm and cosy. 

The worst part is that it smells like Magnus too, and later that night, when Taako wraps himself into a burrito mess of footsie pyjamas and stolen blankets, there's an odd sort of pain in his chest and a lump in his throat. That this gives him a sense of security is pathetic. He's just doing it because this planet is cold and rough.


	2. Wrong Pipe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more planets, more cluelessness

Taako isn't a fussy guy, when it comes to certain preferences. 

All guys are pretty cute. Dad-vibe wrinkle dudes and narrow waisted book types with glasses and squints. Soft music boys and sarcastic rough and tumble mountaineers with calves of fucking steel. Billy from next door, the courier in the mysterious headscarf, the imperious pack leader with his various scars, the chubby baker with his warm smile and the smell of fresh dough. 

 

Magnus is a nice mix of ruff, buff and soft, and he doesn't mind showing off his sheer beefy brawn for any enrapt audience. 

It's not that Taako is enrapt, of course. It's just that he started watching Magnus chop wood as a joke, and Magnus began showing off as a joke, and then suddenly the lines between joke and uncomfortable reality began to treacherously blur until Taako was straight up watching a laughing Magnus chop wood. 

And boy is it a sight for sore eyes. 

 

They don't have much time to spare - the local population, a strange purple breed of elves who blink rapidly and cast strange spells that hiss and burn, are garnering forces against them for reasons unknown and they have to hop from island to island, making camp fires, recording the area, searching and searching for the light that calls from some hidden vale. But right now, the suns are setting, there are so many moons slowly turning pink across the sky, and Magnus’ muscles are straining as he chops block after block. 

“How much wood do you think we need tonight?”

“Aren’t your arms getting tired?”

“What? No! I could do this all night!”

“You’re doing me so right, big fella,” Taako finally concedes, settling back on the grassy hillock he had collapsed on. “Just about fifty more blocks and I think we’ll be  _ all  _ done here.”

That makes Magnus snort and drop his axe, doing a few more poses in the darkening twilight. Taako claps and scores them - “seven and a half but ten for effort”, “a solid nine point nine”, “that’s gonna be a ten from me”, “yeesh needs improvement” - and it’s nice, they both get totally absorbed in it until:

“What the hell are you two doing?” Lup says, staring at them both, and Magnus jumps with a yelp.

“It’s called improv humour, dear sister, and the current setup is horny woodman earns his fucking dinner,” Taako lazily supplies, and Magnus sheepishly laughs and rubs the back of his neck. 

“But this is way way more wood than we need,” Lup says, gesturing at the large pile (“speak for yourself, sis”) and still staring at them both. “What are we gonna do with all this wood?”

“Well-” Taako begins, but is thankfully cut off by Magnus who says, “we could have a real kick ass bonfire.”

 

Lup’s eyes light up. 

“You should have said so before,” she laughs, and they start carrying arm fulls of logs to a slightly safer bonfire location. 

 

The night draws on, dark and cold, but they all sit together round the campfire and talk and laugh until it’s the first person’s look out shift. Lup puts her feet on Barry’s lap and her head on Lucretia’s, and Lucretia leans on Magnus’ knee, and Taako kind of slots himself in between Merle and Magnus where he feels safe, surrounded, and the fire draws low and hot and someone’s roast potato cooks slowly in the embers, and he leans on Magnus, and Magnus pats his head and doesn’t seem to mind at all. 

It’s Davenport’s turn to look out first. Taako ponders for a second about falling into some cutesy meditation on Magnus’ lap, but at the end of the day, it’d just be stupid. It’d be kind of nice picking up on that human trick of sleeping, though. 

He can't sleep. Has always found it difficult to meditate when there are little crackles and pops of firewood that spark randomly and interrupt his flow, finds it especially difficult with the gentle rise and fall of Magnus’ wide chest. He looks up at Magnus’ sleeping face. Quite handsome. So soft and untactical. Nothing like the cunning, cruel men he knows exist out there.

 

The night rolls on. The fire dies even lower. When Merle gets up for his shift, it turns out it's his potato in the fire. He eats it messily, slowly, the sign of a comfortable earlier life. Taako watches him mangle the potato in rapt horror. Some gets in his beard.

 

“Want some?” he says, noticing Taako's eyes reflecting the firelight, and proffers a small steaming piece with his bare hands.

Every single fibre of Taako's being does not want to eat it, but in the end, the slight rumble of his belly wins out and he takes it thoughtfully, before cramming it into his mouth and inhaling it.

 

He starts coughing. 

“Wrong pipe?” Merle says unhelpfully, but he grows more worried as the coughs wrack Taako harder, as he pushes himself away from Magnus. They're phlegmy, coagulated coughs. They sound like his throat is closing over. They don't stop. Taako feels something slimy hit the back of his teeth and coat his tongue and he scrapes it out with his fingers, and there's red - oh god, blood - until Merle says:

“Petals?”

 

More than one this time. A whole glob of wilting, rose red petals covered in saliva and mucus, a disgusting organic thing. Taako stares at it, at the thing that came out of his body. 

Merle stares at his potato in horror and throws it into the fire. 

 

“No, I don't think it's that,” Taako says hoarsely. “At least-”

“Huh? Whassamatter?” Magnus sits up and looks around bleary eyed. Taako covers the red pile with dirt quickly, adopting the meditation pose.

“Nothing, Maggie. Go back to sleep, it's not your shift.”

 

 

* * *

 

“Taako, I think it's time you did some cardio,” Davenport says one day apropos of seemingly nothing. “You've been really out of breath lately.”

Taako scowls. “Are you trying to tactfully tell me I'm getting a little plump?”

“What? No, I'm genuinely worried about your chest. I keep hearing you wheezing. Listen.”

Taako breathes in and out. Huh. There is a slight rattle to it, a soft wheeze that wasn't there before.

“Well, if it's the black lung, I should be fine in about-” Taako quickly works out how long they've been on the latest planet “-three months.”

“I guess.” Davenport still seems unsatisfied. “Keep an eye on it. If it's infectious, you don't want to give it to everyone and have us all die before we can get on the Starblaster.”

“Relax, jefe. I'll be careful not to breathe on anybody.”

 

The three months go fast, way too fast. They say goodbye to the planet of salt plains and ruined, abandoned towns with strange unearthly architecture, watch it get swallowed whole by inky blackness, and say hello to uncharted territory.

 

* * *

 

 

This planet shines into space, a great mirrored orb that at first looks like one big disco ball, until they realise that it's covered all over in shining chrome and metal city structures, with not a speck of greenery, not even a hint of natural life. Low, airborne ships leave trails across the surface, and a shimmering smog gives the planet a glowing aura as a red sun wheels behind it. 

“Unauthorised vehicle, state your designated registration number and visitation intent before clearance to land is granted,” a tinny voice calls out from the long-ignored intercom system on ship, and they all jump at the unexpected noise.

“We don't have a registration number, and our intent is-” Davenport begins, before freezing. He looks at the group like, what does he say? Rescue mission? Godly tool recovery? The damnation or salvation of an entire planet?

“Tourism,” Magnus quickly says into the mic. 

The tinny voice is silent for a few minutes. 

“We are sending a reconnaissance vessel. Remain in your current position or we will incapacitate your vessel,” it finally says, and goes silent with a small bing.

“Acknowledged,” Davenport says, and turns to the group. “I guess... I guess we wait.”

They wait for about half an hour before the ship judders and strains, and suddenly sparks are flying in the cabin. Before Davenport can yell “my ship!”, a door-shaped sheet of metal falls onto the floor, and through it steps several figures in high tech armour, and it's all so alien and futuristic that it's hard to comprehend. 

“Sorry about that,” says the lead space suit, before pulling off the helmet to reveal a smiling human woman with big hair and a bigger burn scar down the entire right side of her head. “Couldn't find an airlock.”

The planet is all humans, which seems statistically implausible to Taako, who isn't used to seeing humans in such great numbers. Magnus and Lucretia, however, seem fascinated, even as they go through the somewhat tedious process of repeating over and over that yes, they are interstellar travellers technically, yes they are technically aliens from another dimension, no they are not interested in world domination or even a little bit of domination, yes the ship runs on love, no you may not touch the twins’ ears-

Bureaucracy is bureaucracy in every dimension, it turns out, and especially so on a planet founded not on wood or stone but on airways and gridmaps and amenities. It's nice enough. They get put into a rather nice little hotel, and little drones clamour at the glassy windows to get pictures of the strange aliens who have weird ears and strange noses and seem to come in all sizes and shapes. 

And they wait. Wait for clearance to regain ownership of their ship. Wait for clearance to leave the hotel to find the light of creation. Months pass in an awful purgatory of form filling and interviews and re-interviews and verification, and they have no idea where the light is, and everyone is just about ready to explode if they have to spend another day cooped up in the glass prison of their hotel. 

Taako stands at a window, staring down at the busy traffic below, unable to hear it or see it any better than he has for the last three months. His ears flick irritably, so that he doesn't hear it at first when Magnus sits beside him and watches too.

“You look like a cat right now,” he finally says, and Taako rolls his eyes.

“Of course, comparing elves to cats, how original. What's next on the racist bingo card? Are you going to call me aquiline? You gonna call me a shitty fantasy Legolas?”

Taako lets out a breath, aware that he's let the frustration of the past few weeks build up and break in that moment. Magnus shrugs.

“No need to be a dick about it. I just came over to have a conversation.”

“Well sorrrrr-eeeee that your go to conversation topic is a racial stereotype, dude, really dropped the ball on that one huh.”

“I get it!” Magnus raises his hands and frowns. “We're on a planet full of humans and it's making you feel uncomfortable and weird for whatever reason, and you're taking it out on me, for whatever reason.”

“No you fucking-” Taako covers his eyes in frustration. “You useless garbage man, what the fuck are you even talking about? I'm  _ uncomfortable _ because I've been cooped up here for about three fucking months. I'm  _ bored _ . This piece of trash planet is holding our ship hostage and we can't even go out and party! It's all bullshit!”

He stands up, and Magnus stands up, and for a hot second Taako giddily thinks Magnus is going to fight him, and then he'll finally get some entertainment. 

“We all feel that way!” Magnus yells. “We all want to go out and do things! You can't just yell at your friends because you feel bad! We feel bad too!”

“ _ You're _ yelling at me!”

“ _ You _ started it!”

“No  _ you _ started it!”

“And  _ I'm _ finishing it!”

“No,  _ you're _ finishing- wait, what?”

Magnus points at the window to the street below. “I've had enough of this! Everyone is fighting and it's really stupid, and it's all this place's fault! I'm busting out of here, I'm getting our ship back, and we're going to go out and raise hell until we either find the light of creation or we fly out in the nick of time and the Hunger consumes this world whole!”

“Wh- well, what's your plan?” Taako says, feeling like he really ought to be carrying on with the momentum of the righteous anger of a few seconds ago, but also feeling like he had lost track of the argument somewhere and becoming a little curious to see where it would go. 

“I don't have one yet!”

“Well- fuckin’ baloney!”

They both stop yelling and look at each other, fuming for no reason, wondering how to escape the weird energy they had created. Until Taako says quietly, but with growing confidence:

“Hey, you know what's missing from this planet?”

“Trees? I miss them. Good oxygen boys.”

“No, Magnus, it's magic. Nobody's doing magic. I can feel it - sort of humming, you know, like back home, but I can't feel anyone using it.”

Magnus begins to look like he's forming an idea. Taako likes that look a lot. He continues:

“You know, this planet is the most scientifically advanced one we've seen yet. But it's all science. Look. It's all engineering and technology. No magic. No mana. No spirit.”

“Do you think, maybe... as they built better technology, they forgot about magic because they didn't need it anymore?” Magnus casts an appraising eye over the city, taking in the tall tall silver structures.

“Maybe.” Taako hums. “But what I'm thinking is...”


	3. Alien Wizards From Space

“Our oldest fictional texts deal with the boundaries between real and magic, life and afterlife, as we see in Nörn’s descent into the underworld, the absolute antithesis of his first familiar, civilised home. Exactly halfway through the epic, Nörn is in the realm of fantasy, where spells and magic blur into reality-”

“Sir, did the ancients have magic?” Corde lets her hand fall back onto her desk and blushes red at her own outburst. “I mean. Is there a chance? All the old stories kind of make it seem... normal.”

The professor blinks at his young student. “It's not that they had magic - this is not an historical account, but a fictional epic of a fictional character. They certainly may have  _ believed _ -”

Corde sighs and turns her attention back to the large glass window in the side of her lecture hall. She already knew all about Nörn’s great adventure to the underworld - a world of planewalking and spellcasting and mana slots, a magical world where dragons roamed and wizards shot spells. Her world is covered in metal and glass now, and there are no mysterious wild places left, but sometimes she daydreams about this planet in the past long gone, when men were wild and free. 

But magic isn't real. It's not a forgotten art because nobody ever cast spells in the first place. It's just her, this world, and the awful mundane reality of the electronic world day in day out - 

Before her very eyes, a flying carpet carrying a long eared alien dressed like an ancient wizard and a buff warrior wobbles past the window, followed by a rather uncertain flying police cab and a whole host of reporting drones. Beneath them, the vast gulf of the city stretches away, a certain death for anybody unlucky enough to fall that far - though they would have a good few minutes to come to terms with it. 

She can't hear anything, but she can see the wizard waving a wand around, and suddenly he disappears.

She gasps.

 

“Corde? Did you have something to add?” the professor says rather impatiently, and the entire class turns to stare at her.

“There’s-” she tries to say. “There's a- it's real! It's all real! Aliens, magic, everything!”

 

* * *

 

“Please remain still while we attempt to rescue you,” a loudspeaker blares from the flashing police cab just behind Magnus, so he turns around and yells “you're the ones who need rescuing! I'm flying with a mad and bad wizard who knows magic! And he's angry!”

Taako pops back into the mortal plane. “Oh gods, Magnus. My spell slots are just refilling themselves over and over. I feel fucking fantastic. There's all this - all this magic, and nobody is using it, and it just feels like a dam bursting except it's me, I'm the mana bukkake vessel -”

“Taako, that's nice, but they are trying to arrest us so if you could help me out here?”

“Right, right,” Taako says, and stands up on the wobbly flying carpet. His hair flies out around him, he raises his wand, and oh, he can feel it, this great pool of energy and magic just waiting for him, the sole linchpin, he can barely contain it. Magic crackles through his fingers and up his arms. 

He casts Mage Hand. He casts Mage Hand again. He casts Mage Hand a third time, and juggles the police cab in the air with all three enormous spectral hands, before putting it forcefully onto a nearby roof and pinning it there.

“I shouldn't be able to do that,” he laughs, and it has an edge of mania to it. 

“Can you speed up this carpet?” Magnus asks as the sound of approaching police cabs with wailing sirens gets closer and closer.

“Oh honey,” Taako sighs, “I could burn this whole planet if you wanted me to.”

 

It's a wild chase. The mission involves Charming people to get the Starblaster back, sneaking into government storage, disguises, flying, fighting, and it's all by Magnus’ side. Taako has never felt so goddamn alive. 

 

The year passes in a chaotic, busy mess. Against all odds, they find the light of creation. Taako gives the planet one last gift before he and Magnus take the ‘Blaster and fly it, solo, to the heavens, to run another year. He casts a few spells and it rains harmless golden sparks and warm snow. 

“It's real,” he repeats, and looks at Magnus. “They couldn't see what was right in front of their eyes, right at their fingertips. But it was there the whole time.”

“We made it,” he just replies with a grin, and Taako suddenly feels it, a sick craving in the back of his mouth, the urge to just run and tackle him and kiss him and say we made it! That was crazy! We did it!

And then the tendrils of light appear, and the Hunger roars and roars but they go, they turn bright white-

 

* * *

 

At first, things seem normal. Taako and Magnus, with his same stupid dumb black eye and busted lip, grin at everyone else smugly.

And then Taako starts coughing. He coughs til his eyes water. Everyone is staring. It's too much, he has to go, he knows what's coming next. It's a short run to the bathroom, and that's where he retreats at full pace, bent double over the sink, coughing, coughing up petal after petal after petal, a whole torrent that doesn't stop. Petal after petal after slimy petal. He fills up the sink with delicate petals and his own mucus. 

 

When he stands up again, Lup and Barry are watching nervously.

 

* * *

 

This planet is almost too dangerous to land on. The skies are filled with wheeling great lizards with long wings and sharp claws, and they roost in rocky mountains and eat the native gentle giant herbivores that dwarf even the Starblaster. There are no people of any species. Only vast lizards. 

 

They don't take the cloaking device off for any reason. 

 

They spend the year hunting the light of creation. It's out there, somewhere, but some sharp and selfish part of Taako's mind says who cares this time? It's only lizards. Not like the last world, full of eager humans and fast vehicles and unlimited spell slots.

He stays in the ship as he and Davenport fly low at night, searching, scanning the ground for any sign of their prize. At least, he tries to stay in the Starblaster, but Lup and Lucretia chase him down with a new discovery and need him there for a specific transmutation spell, or something, which he does lazily and waving a vague hand in the affected area. 

 

Death is no stranger to them now. They've all died many times, not quite hundreds but getting closer each year, and - well, it's sad, sometimes, but mostly inconvenient. It used to be sadder. Taako doesn't know if he'll ever take a funeral seriously ever again. 

Consequently, Taako doesn't treat death with the same reverence he used to. In a way, it's easier to conk out for 6 months or so and reappear at the end of the year to see everyone's tired faces having already completed the difficult part. 

So when Taako gets eaten by one of the carnivorous lizards, it isn't such a big deal for him. That's just how life is sometimes. One minute he's cautiously heading back to the 'Blaster, next minute he's been grabbed by sharp claws and pulled into the sky, and the ground falls away, and the flying lizard screams and roars and there's the hard impact of a rocky outcrop and it's roaring, and it's lunging, and there's a sharp horrible crunch of indescribable pain-

 

and he blinks, and he's back in the cockpit of the Starblaster, and there everyone is. They look at him, and he looks at them, and suddenly Magnus is pulling him into a hug. Taako wants to say he doesn't try to enjoy it, but he does. Oh, he very much enjoys it. 

“What happened while I was gone?” he asks incredulously, pulling back a little, and now everyone's hugging him. Gross. 

“It was like a horror story,” Magnus says roughly, and sure enough even though his body is exactly the same black eyed cut lip young boy who left home, his eyes have a certain lining of absolute terror. “We were getting picked off one by one. Those lizards... those lizards were cleverer than we first thought. First you went, then Lup, and then Barry went missing one day, and then I saw Davenport being... kind of eaten to death, and... Lucretia got dragged through the vents and... ugh. I almost didn't make it.”

Lucretia looks horrified as well, and Lup curls a comforting arm around her waist and places a head on her shoulder. 

“We made it though,” she says, and Lucretia shudders, but nods.

“Let's brace for the next one,” she adds in a foreboding tone. Magnus still hasn't let go of Taako yet. In fact, he stays close until the ship finally lands on the new planet.


	4. Horrible, Shirtless Boy

This planet is a little sandy, and for the multitude of humanoid species on its surface, life can be tough. But the small mud brick cities hide lush rooms full of sumptuous fabric and cleansed water, and each person wears a full facial cover to stop the red sand from filling their lungs. Barry is coughing violently before they realise that they need face masks. By then, it's almost too late. He spends the rest of the year on the 'Blaster, so Taako becomes Lup's companion when they wander through a town with narrow red streets and lines of drying washing strung from window to window.

“Holy shit, Taako, it's getting worse,” Lup says quietly, pulling him aside at a busy market place and waiting for him to catch his breath. “Look at you. You can't walk down a street without getting out of breath.”

“Bullshit,” wheezes Taako. “I'm fit as a god damn fiddle. I'm at peak physical condi-”

He runs out of breath before he can finish the sentence.

“This is bad. This is very bad.” Lup looks around. “If this illness doesn't get reset every year... if this is somehow making you worse, despite the fact this shouldn't be happening, then this is more dangerous than just some random chest cold. We need to get you checked out.”

“By who? Your boyfriend?”

Lup turns bright red and begins arguing, but Taako cuts her off.

“Your not boyfriend. Come on, think about what we have on the ship. It's not a doctor's surgery. He knows exactly the same amount of things as we do at this point. If you or I can't diagnose it, nobody else on the ship can, because we've all read all the same medical books and all done the same basic emergency training.”

Lup hums. “Fine. We'll find you a local doctor. Maybe they have an answer that we don't.”

 

Despite the language barrier, they manage to find an opening to the local equivalent of a doctor, which is how Taako finds himself sat bare chested in front of a wizened old orc woman with a face like a walnut, who prods his sternum while ordering him to cough rhythmically.

“And cough one... two... three...” she chants, and Taako begrudgingly makes an utter fool of himself for her by doing so. Her fingers are horribly cold considering she lives on a desert planet. The whole room is cold, with thick clay walls and many many vivid wall hangings blocking any heat or sand from infiltrating the building.

“You swallowed too much sand, yes?” she asks impatiently, and Taako shakes his head.

“I didn't swallow a lot. I've been wearing a mask.”

“But you have sand in your lungs, yes? Yes?”

“You tell me,” Taako snaps. “You're the medical professional here.”

The orc woman rolls her eyes and pulls back with an air of certainty, before bustling away to rummage through some drawers and pull out several rather sharp looking instruments.

“I mean,” Taako says a little more respectfully, “you're the professional here so I'm sure you know what you're doing, but actually I feel fine. I feel great. My chest is clear and fresh-”

His own coughing interrupts him, and it takes a few minutes to subside. His eyes are streaming, his throat is sore, there's a horrible weight pressing painfully on his chest, and in his hands are two or three crumpled wet red petals that cling to each other.

The lady stands over him, and her expression is no longer impatient or bored. She picks up a petal - ew gross she's touching his saliva ew - and spreads it flat, and for the first time Taako sees the horribly organic veins that taper through the petal, the marbling of pale whites and reds and pinks, the pulsing and the single drop of blood that buds from the end of the petal that would have been attached to something before it was pulled off by an unknown force.

He retches. The woman lets him with an impassive face.

“How long.”

Taako does some quick mental calculation. “About... about thirty years.”

She lowers her head. “It's a wonder that it's not already too late.” There's a small fire by the side - she throws the petals in, and they burn with the smell of roast beef. “There are two solutions.”

“You know what it is?” Taako gasps for breath, recovering from the coughing, the retching.

“Yes.” She sits by him now, and places a cold hand on his sternum again, over his heart. “It is a parasite, a magical kind, and it is extremely rare. I have seen it only once before. It feeds on the sadness of a one sided love, and if you cannot stop it, it will consume your lungs, your throat, and then finally your heart.”

Taako feels as if he is floating somewhere far away, hearing this from someone else, hearing somebody he knew once being told that they are being eaten inside out. “But I'm not in love.”

Now her expression is impatient again. “Enough idiocy. Here is how we fix it. Either you must earn love and rid the parasite with requited hearts, or you must poison it and kill it from within.”

“Poison,” Taako immediately says, and she growls.

“If you poison it, you may suffer irreparable damage to your heart.” She beats his chest once and he lets out a soft oof.

Taako looks away. Well, that didn't sound so bad. He'd always been independent, and anyway, he had Lup. He'd always have Lup. Who needed romance when he had all the love he needed from his twin?

Besides... there are all sorts of issues with going after Magnus now. Hey, Maggie, fall in love with me so I don't die. If you don’t, my actual lungs will be eaten by a carnivorous magic flower. No pressure.

“Alright,” Taako said, and gripped his cloak with his hands. “What kind of poison do I need?”

“Any will do, belladonna, cyanide, arsenic... you must inhale it as a spray.” Her voice grows more sombre, more grave. “The touch of poison will mark you onwards. It will reappear in your life even after the flower is dead, even after you forget all about here and now. That flower grows in the very strands of your soul.” His chest throbs. “If you root it out with poison... you may never love another living being again.”

Taako laughs hollowly. “Time to put the romance back in necromancer, am I right?”

She doesn’t laugh. “You have some time to decide what to do - but not too long. You must make your choice soon, or you will succumb completely.”

And Taako - well, for Taako, it’s not much of a choice at all.

 

* * *

 

Magnus is so good. Magnus is so very, very good. Selfless, brave, so ready to sacrifice himself to save even the smallest of creatures, when Taako is still hovering and learning and saving himself above all others because that's all he's ever known.

Magnus is also a little shit.

“Those cookies were for everyone,” Taako yells, or he would if he had the breath for it, so it's a little hoarse. “You asshole. You ate them all? What were you on?”

Merle has gone to talk with John, and he's gone for the whole year. The light has been recovered, Barry has been whiling his days away on some kind of bildungsroman up some kind of mountain, Davenport has been discussing all sorts of strategies and tactics with Lucretia, who also has been spending a lot of time practising magic with a slightly misplaced Lup who doesn't know what to do when Barry is stuck on a mountain for a year.

This leaves Magnus, who is too young and vibrant and annoying to hang out with the others, and Taako, who gets bored by strategy and doesn't want Lup to see just how bad it's gotten.

No matter how much Taako avoids Magnus, there he is once again at every opportunity to shatter Taako's peace.

Right now he is giving Taako puppy dog eyes even as he brushes the cookie crumbs from his bare chest. Horrible, shirtless boy. He needs to put on a top instead of just leaving his official IPRE jacket open to the wind for anyone to see.

“But they looked so delicious and so edible,” he whines, and Taako has to admit there's something awfully persuasive in that plaintive tone. “And I was so hungry.” His bottom lip quivers. “And you still have a whole bunch of cookies left.”

Taako steels his heart. “No. You were a greedy bastard and now you're not getting any, you little shit. Shoulda thought about sharing some of that - that cookie windfall, you ass.”

Magnus’ eyes seem to fill with tears. Taako stands firm even as those welling ducts batter against his sensibilities like a strong sea against a tide wall. “But they tasted so goooood,” he whines, and Taako turns away with a stomp.

“No. No, no and no, and that's final.” The remainder of the cookies are clutched protectively under his arm, and he starts walking away before Magnus can tempt him back. “I'm going to find the others and give them what you didn't vore away in that big gullet of yours.”

 

If only the ordeal had ended there.

Taako finds himself a doting assistant in a bored, hungry Magnus. Too doting. When Taako sits down, Magnus is there with a foot stool and a cushion to facilitate his utmost comfort. When it’s his turn to do the laundry, he finds Magnus already finished by a pile of jumbled colours and whites, slightly shrunk from a wrong temperature wash, looking proud as hell and waiting expectantly for a cookie which would never come. Further, Taako is absolutely sure that he will die if he has more than two back rubs a week from Magnus’ big, warm hands, and yet Magnus keeps offering them with a lot of eyebrow wiggles and pointed comments about kneading cookie dough, and honestly Taako wasn't ever going to be able to resist that.

So, in the end, he makes Magnus an entire mountain of cookies.

“Now stop bothering me!” he yells, and Magnus does stop. And in the end, while Taako can rationally look at the situation and say that Magnus wasn't really fishing for anything but cookies, and it was a big joke anyway, and Taako knew that, his heart still goes a little cold when he sits down and Magnus merely nods at him across the room instead of rushing to wait on him with a cold martini and a pair of slippers.

Well, at least, he misses the attention. It hurts.

 

When Magnus goes back to normal affability, when they're both just friends and family and colleagues, Taako coughs up new petals every night and realises that he can't afford for it to hurt. He needs to cut the cord as soon as possible, or at least, steel himself to do it. He gives himself a few years to prepare.

 

* * *

 

 

The plan that Taako formulates as they approach the new world is to avoid Magnus completely by roaming the tundra alone, or maybe with Lup, and by avoiding Magnus completely therefore begin to quash the ugly sick crush killing him from the inside.

His plan is immediately scuppered when the team see a world completely covered in water - no continents, no islands, not even clouds in the sky. When the Starblaster hovers over the water, the disturbance in the air creates ripples on the otherwise glassy surface for the first time in possibly millennia, and they spread out and away until they are no longer visible over the horizon, until the sea is once again as calm and flat as a millpond, a vast mirror. 

Davenport gives orders to inflate the emergency water landing gear to convert the spaceship into a seaship, but the utter silence of the planet hushes his orders and mutes all chatter. As Taako stands on what is now the deck of the 'Blaster, there is no breeze against his cheek, no slap of waves against the newly converted prow, no screaming sea birds nor the far ringing bell of a busy port. There is only silence, the smell of iodine, and the steady background hum of stale magic that hangs lifeless in the material plane. 

 

The 'Blaster is not a large ship. Of course Magnus notices that Taako is avoiding him. There is nothing else to notice. Barry suggests they sail the ship and try to find the Light, but even after a week of searching, they come across absolutely nothing. There is only the prow cutting through the water as precisely and sharply as a knife, and the faint wash that spreads out behind them, small waves that ultimately settle back into stillness. 

Magnus enters the kitchen. Taako suddenly remembers he left a book on the deck. 

Magnus sits on the deck. Taako complains he's too cold and goes back inside. 

Magnus taps on Taako's door. Taako pretends to be asleep.

Each day, the only thing that marks the passage of time is the sole white sun that rises and sets without any cloud to block it nor shade to hide under, only the merciless glare reflecting from the water. It's crystal clear. 

Lup and Barry hesitantly lift a bucket to test for any toxicity, and discover that it’s saline seawater, and it's pure. It's sterile. 

“It shouldn't be sterile,” Lup mutters with alarm as Taako watches her boil strange glass vials and conduct odd rituals over increasingly geometric patterns. “There should be something here. Anything. It's just pure salt and water. It's not even oxygenated.”

“Is it poisonous?” he asks, and she shakes her head. 

“Not as far as I know. I wouldn't drink it, though. The whole thing reeks of old magic. You can feel it, can't you.”

He can. It makes his knees ache. 

 

The water is completely transparent, which they only discover when they drop a sounding depth over the side of the boat, a long thin chain with a heavy weight on the end, and they unspool it and unspool it and unspool it as Merle reads out the length of the sound in an increasingly incredulous voice:

“60 metres... 200 metres... 350 metres...”

Taako only loses clear sight of the sound when it hits 90 metres, and the giddy drop down the length of the chain chills him. 

Magnus hits the end of the chain. “Why the hell do we have such a long length of chain anyway?” he asks in a confused, awed voice, and Taako avoids his gaze and says pointedly,

“It's enchanted to grow to a maximum length of 1000 metres.” 

“1000 metres? Are you fucking kidding me?” Lup runs to the side of the boat and stares over in horror. “I'm getting vertigo. On a goddamn boat.”

“And it didn't even hit bottom,” Merle says, as awed as Magnus is. “All we've done is create the world's longest deep sea fishing line.”

They all go quiet. Davenport quickly orders the depth to be brought up, and they spend that day nervously watching the ocean, wondering if there is anything out there, in that horrible sterile sea. 

 

There is nothing in the water. Nothing in the sky. Nothing on the horizon.

Until there is. A black dot suddenly appears, and everyone runs on deck to stare at the strange mirage that finally breaks the monotony of so many months with nothing to do or see. Lucretia sets up her charts and uses some complicated brass instruments - enhanced with a little magic from the twins - to try and calculate if this thing is moving or not.

“There's no landmarks for me to use aside from the sun so I can't say for sure,” she says after a few minutes, “but I don't think it's moving. There's no wake or wash around it either.”

The black dot grows into a smudge, then into a thumbnail, and then they can begin to see details and guess at what it is - and it looks like some kind of ship. 

“It's larger than I thought,” Lucretia says nervously as it keeps growing and growing and growing, and now the details grow ever clearer - a long, sleek bow low in the water that curves up into an improbably round dome covered in the glittering scales of hundreds of glass windows, hundreds of strange tubes that run along the outside like veins in ordered tiers that criss cross the exterior, and two vast gaping maws side by side that look a little like strange ventilation ducts - Barry hazards a guess that those are exhausts for a great engine. 

As they get closer, it keeps growing. Now the signs of decay grow apparent: loose ropes that hang limp without being disturbed; rivulets of rust streams now bone dry; cracked glass, the shards of which still litter the curving dome top; and no signs of life. No smoke. No flags. No waving signals. 

Taako has been casting various detect life spells for the last few months, with no results other than the constant mosquito-buzz hum of stale magic and the sense of missing the greater picture. It yields no better results now. 

The shelled hull grows so large that the 'Blaster floats by like a pistachio shell against a bowling ball. Lucretia looks the most nervous, looking up with the whites of her eyes flickering between rusted bolts.

“We should send someone on to investigate,” Barry says, “in case this has something to do with the light.”

“No,” Lucretia says immediately. “That thing is older than a year. Look at it. We don't know how long it's been sat here. There aren't even any currents to pull it along - this thing could have been floating here for a thousand years.”

“Wouldn't it have rotted away?” Lup actually looks a little excited. “If we could get samples from the hull, we could try to apply anti-corrosion techniques to the Starblaster, or even just salvage scrap to do repairs-”

As they round the ship, Magnus swears loudly. On the side that now appears, the side that faces away from the 'Blaster’s original angle of approach, the reason for the ship's abandonment is clear. It's half a ship, kept floating by some teetering coincidence of twisted metal and lucky buoyancy. A great hole is missing from the front, and Taako can see individual compartments revealed to the light inside, what could be bedrooms, labs, cupboards. 

“Could have been an explosion, though you'd expect more debris,” says Merle, and Lucretia suggests a crash landing, but Taako sees how the metal structure bends and squeezes to the middle, how the ragged ends perforate in a way that reminds him of the way wild dogs would tear into the salted meat barrels.

“It was bitten,” he says, and as everyone examines it, looks at the great torn sheathes pressed together in strange ways, imagines a mouth large enough to bite this behemoth in half, the silence of the planet grows even heavier.

“Let's increase speed to the engine and find the Light as soon as possible,” says Davenport. 

Everyone is eager to leave this planet behind. Nobody looks down into the water anymore. Nobody wants to look down one day and see teeth.

 

Before the Hunger comes, before great columns of black tar spill into the ocean and cause vast waves 100 metres tall, there is a short period of rest where there is nothing to do but wait. Wait until the Light is found, wait until the Hunger appears, wait for this year to end so they can escape the monotony of a flat featureless horizon and the same sun rising and falling with no variation. Taako waits for his crush on Magnus to die. It's taking longer than he first anticipated.

He's been avoiding Magnus admirably all year, and now's the final stretch. All Taako has to do is convince himself that Magnus isn't hot or cute or sweet, and that's a hell of a lot easier when he's not being subjected to that noise over and over. He finds himself a good, comfortable spot in the inescapable sunshine, sets himself up a fantasy Long Island ice tea, and begins reading a particularly dry novel on transmuting organic matter for the 24th time because there's absolutely nothing else to do anymore. 

A shadow blocks his sun. He looks up, snarky comment ready, but instead meets the nervous gaze of Magnus.

He looks back down at his book quickly and takes a loud slurp of ice tea. 

“Taako,” Magnus says while twiddling his fingers, “um. Is something wrong?”

“I'm peachy babes,” Taako says, even as he internally curses. 

Magnus looks down. “I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong - no, I'm not wrong. You've been avoiding me. And that's okay, I guess. I just want to know if,” his words are stumbling over each other, so eager to make it up to him, “if I did something wrong. If I made you uncomfortable. Because you know I don't always pick up on that, but I'm trying. So, um. What can I do to make it up-”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” Taako says in a low voice, still looking down at his book. Magnus falters.

“Are- are you sure?”

Taako sighs. “Magnus, I. Have you ever been out in a situation where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't?”

“Uhh...”

“Well, my damned if I do is that I potentially force someone into something that they won't have been able to decide autonomously for themselves.” He waves a hand nonchalantly as if discussing the god damn weather. “A coerced decision isn't really a free decision and I'm not into that. My damned if I don't, however, well I've got two options and both of them are just kind of shitty all round.”

“Phewf,” says Magnus, “Jesus, how bad is this situation? Like life and death?”

And Taako considers telling him everything, every damn thing, the fleshy petals, the constant pain on his chest, and of course Magnus is so noble that he'd immediately agree to try. How much resentment would form after a few years of trying? How long would Magnus stew in bed, next to some dumb elf he hadn't chosen and had to pretend to love so a flower wouldn't eat his chest cavity?

Taako laughs. “Of course it isn't life and death, you idiot. I'm just thinking about what to cook for dinner.” He stands up, stretches, lets the book fall carelessly on the floor. “It's this shitty planet. This whole shitty situation. I've been so antsy and annoyed and it doesn't help that the magic here stinks like ass.”

Magnus snickers. “So we're cool?”

“Duh.” A young boy, an open book, not a sticking plaster or a panacea. Taako knows what he has to choose. “Sorry I took it out on you. Not your fault.”

That's the first true thing he's said in a long time, but Magnus just shrugs it off and pulls him into another one of those soul healing, bone crushing hugs. 

“You're important to me,” he says. Taako feels the root of the flower growing deeper and deeper into his aorta. It feels good. It feels awful. 

Of course, that's when the Hunger finally attacks. 


	5. Towpath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey!! everyone who left me a kind comment, thank you so much!! i read and deeply appreciate every single one, even if i don't reply (mainly because i'm awkward and i don't know how to say thank you without gushing and embarrassing myself haha). i love you! in return, have a long chapter. will they get together?? won't they?? how will the parasite be purged??? 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS 
> 
> the second half of this chapter involves the worst gore of the fic. writing this made my gag reflex act up a couple times. i'll give a tl:dr at the end notes if you need to skip over it. blood, vomit, pain, the works. please be careful. 
> 
> you can skip this part after magnus and taako return to the 'blaster and read the summary instead.

This world is so like their home world, that first world, that Taako can see the individual twinges of pain and familiarity in his ship mates’ faces as they lower themselves down to ground level. They step out, tentatively, taking smaller strides that grow into bigger ones that turn into runs and leaps and - well, Magnus falls flat and starts tearing up grass as if trying to figure out the catch.

They’re safe. The Light is safe. The Hunger won’t find them. By gods, if the gods still care, the Hunger won’t find them here. The tools they had to make are heavy but now they feel like nothing, now there is no burden, now there is no looking over their shoulders waiting to see the sky turn black - 

Taako doesn’t know what to do anymore. He’s only ever lived running, and now the running has stopped. How do you slow down the momentum of a hundred years?

 

It’s not exactly the same, but it’s not a bad place to retire. Not a paradise, not a hellscape, dangerous and rowdy, but familiar. Their final destination. The last frontier between fight and family. 

 

By gods, by gods, they think as they park the ship and hide it. By gods.

 

* * *

Taako knocks quietly on Merle's door on the 'Blaster, knuckles rapping a solemn staccato, and after a few seconds, Merle cracks the door open and peeks through the sliver.

“Taako? Oh, come in.”

The door opens fully. Inside is a dank nest of blankets, half read books, peat and compost spilling out of little pots, trays full of seedlings and cuttings, and an overall earthy musty smell that isn't exactly pleasant but isn't a full on stank either. Pipes for both smoking and the pan variety litter every surface. 

“Hello, Merle,” Taako begins in that soft wheedling way he often has when he tries to open a serious conversation. Merle catches it immediately, but he doesn't let on. Taako is grateful for that. “How’s the... gardening going on? Plants and stuff, huh?”

“Oh, it goes,” Merle says amicably, gesturing around with a shrug. “It's been pretty nice being able to get new cuttings for the older plants. You know, from... from our world. Haven't seen them in the wild for, well, about a hundred years.”

Taako nods. “Isn't it uncanny.” His ears are flat against his head. “Have you said hi to your cousins yet?”

“Dropped a note,” Merle says with a shrug, “and we'll see how it goes. Funny how things work out.”

“Very funny.” There's a low bed nearby covered in pillows and mattress toppers and ratty woollen throws. Taako sits on it heavily and takes a deep breath. “Merle, I have a friend and I don't know how to help him.”

“A friend.” Merle sits beside Taako.

“Yeah, I have those,” he replies defensively. “But here's the problem. This friend... is dying from a curable disease. There are two cures. One is that... one is that he has to ask someone to, uh... sacrifice a huge amount to save him. Sacrifice their freedom to choose, their future plans, their everything. They have to be hooked up to the dude forever - uh, magically - whether they like it or not.”

Merle nods. “And the other cure?”

Taako clenches a fist into a blanket. “My friend has to sacrifice a small part of himself. Just cut it right out. It's not necessarily a very vital part of him, and he could probably be happy without it, but it would be gone forever. And it would change everything.” 

Merle lets out a long breath, stroking his beard. “Woof. That's pretty heavy.”

Taako hums in agreement. 

“Is being hooked up to this friend forever... painful? Is it deadly?” 

“No, I don't think so. But it would probably get annoying.”

“Doesn't sound so bad.”

“Merle, have you ever been forced into a relationship you didn't want?”

That stops Merle short: he hums and says no, not particularly.

“It would be kind of like that. Coercing someone. And the worst part is that even if he gave the person the choice, that person would say yes because... well, that's the kind of person they are. They don't hesitate. So it's not really a choice. If I asked him, I'd know he'd say yes, so it's not free will, is it.”

Merle ignores the slip of the tongue - he had already guessed. “I see. So the question is whether your friend wants to force someone to sacrifice something for him, or sacrifice something himself.” He frowns. “Taako... you know, we're your family. If there's something we can do for you, of course we're gonna do it. We ran this ship on love.”

“It's not me, you old bat!” Taako yells, but slumps into the pillows. “That's why I can't ask any of you. You'd say yes even if it made you fuckin’ miserable every day.”

“Say yes to what?” Merle touches Taako's arm, gentle but insistent, nerves playing on his voice. “What do you need from us?”

Taako closes his eyes and considers spilling everything that's been growing inside of him out, just vomiting it into Merle's lap. Ten seconds, thirty seconds, forty seconds pass as he bites the inside of his mouth and Merle grips onto his arm. 

“It's not me, dude,” Taako suddenly says angrily. “I'm fine, haha. Fuck.”

Merle sighs, his hand still on Taako's arm, radiating concern and worry, and Taako shakes him off. 

“You don't have to tell me,” Merle says quietly, “but I'm here for you. Whatever you need.”

Taako begins to stand up and summons all of his acting skill and insouciant wit for one final deception. 

“By the way, I need some weed killer if you've got any spare. Now we're finally parked for good I keep getting dandelions growing through my air vents.”

Merle blinks, shuffles through a bureau stuffed with mysterious envelopes and containers, and hands Taako a little vial with a diffuser spray on the top. 

“Here.” He presses it into Taako's hand and squeezes. “Careful though. It's pretty potent stuff, so wear gloves.”

“I'm hearing ya,” Taako says, and then flees the room before Merle can say anything to change his mind.

 

* * *

“Hey Maggie.”

Magnus looks up from his desk where he's writing a letter - Taako assumes to his dead family again - and blinks in surprise as he registers Taako leaning against his door jamb.

“Hey buddy,” he says. “What's up?”

Taako pauses, purses his lips, shrugs. “Do you wanna hang out?”

“Hang out?”

“Yeah, just chill together. Watch a movie or something.”

Magnus immediately stands up. “What's wrong?”

“Are you kidding? Your good bro, coworker and shipmate of one hundred fucking years asks you to chill and you think he's sad or something?” Taako folds his arms and pouts. “I'm just bored as hell.”

“Me too.” Magnus relaxes a little, grabbing his coat from the bed and oh, Taako loves it when Magnus discards everything he's doing to pay attention to him. “Let's go do something.”

“Yeah! Let's paint the town red, baby!” 

Painting the town red apparently seems to consist of going on a brief walk down green tunnels of deciduous trees through which the summer sun dapples them in warm flecks, past slow canals on which leaves float lazily, past pastures of sheep who watch them pass balefully, until they stumble onto a nearby hamlet full of sleepy halflings smoking pipes as they lean on their front gates. There’s a little pub that Magnus has to duck when entering to avoid banging his head on the lintel, and it smells like tobacco and roast beef, and together they sit in a very comfy little booth while around them more halflings bicker amiably with a couple of orcs about the latest horse race. The sun is low and the air is warm. Things have a soft golden glow. He’d forgotten what it was like, this kind of light, this kind of evening. 

“I wonder if the others will worry about us while we’re gone,” Magnus muses, and Taako hums.

“I couldn’t care less. They’ll look after the ‘Blaster for now. Davenport was suggesting we move it somewhere more permanent, more hidden, but... hey, let’s not talk shop right now.”

At this, Magnus lets out a short sharp bark of a laugh. “But it’s been, like, a century I think. I don’t know how to talk anything else.”

“Sure you do. I’ll start.” Taako takes a deep breath. Magnus watches him, eyes wide.

Shit, where does he begin? This pub is nice. He wants to come here every week with Magnus, and sit in this little booth, and feel what he’s feeling right now. He wants to order the beef wellington. He is deeply in love with Magnus. He wants to get a half-pint of the house cider but he doesn’t want to leave this booth. He wants to tell Magnus how beautiful he looks in the fading evening sun, with the gold light on his hair and his eyelashes, and especially now when Magnus is starting to laugh at Taako’s lack of casual conversation, big wide smile, warm crinkled eyes.

“We-” he stammers, “we’re actually going to age now, dude. Oh gods, my complexion. My beautiful, supple complexion. I can’t live another hundred years if I’m going to get wrinkles!”

Magnus laughs again and pats his own face thoughtfully. “Hey, at least you’ll get a good couple centuries out of that face. Things are gonna get real ruff on this visage in like, two years at most.”

Taako remembers: Magnus is human. He doesn’t have centuries anymore.

“Oh, dang,” he says weakly. They both go quiet. 

“I don’t want to live without you,” Magnus suddenly says so blandly and honestly that Taako chokes on his drink. “Any of you, of us. The team. I can’t imagine it.”

Taako rapidly tries to control his breathing even as his throat tightens. “It’s not you who has to worry about that, compadre. You’ll be gone in sixty years or less depending on whether you manage to find a suitable cliff to stumble off.”

It’s meant to be a joke, but Magnus’ hand touches his. “Was that you saying you’re gonna miss us?”

“This is so heavy!” Taako squawks. “What happened to not talking shop? I just wanna hang out and have a chill time and look at us, we’re talking about death. We don’t have to worry about that for a while. Let’s just...”

“I know,” Magnus says, gently. “Sorry, haha. So what should we talk about?”

They’re at square one again. Taako sighs. It’s raspy, whistling, and the sound of it shocks him. He’s been hiding how out of breath he is all evening, how the pain is making him wince when he takes deeper breaths. At least he hasn’t been coughing up petals yet. 

“I dunno,” he says, drawing patterns on the wooden tabletop with his finger in the little rings of unknown liquid. Could be beer. Could be piss. “I’m just happy being here with you.”

His ears burn. Magnus makes a soft “d’aww” sound. 

Taako revels in it. For one last night, as they walk home together in the soft blue twilight, as the stars begin to shine one by one, he revels in being very in love as they walk, arms bumping, back to the ‘Blaster. It doesn’t matter anymore that Magnus can never know. Right now he’s happy, and there’s a sweet melancholy bubble of air in his stomach, and Magnus keeps cracking dumb jokes. 

Big moths float lazily past them. The canal now looks like a soft black ribbon of glass, no barges to disturb it nor loud horses on the towpath to frighten away the owl calls and gentle, otherworldy cries of the magical nocturnal creatures of Faerun: no rolling initiative or passive perception checks, just Taako and Magnus side by side. 

The Starblaster looms around a corner and the sounds of setting up for dinner comes from inside, and Taako’s happy bubble just pops. Today’s the day.

“Magnus-” he begins just as Magnus says “Taako-” at the same time, and they both stop and look at each other. 

“No, you go,” Magnus says, and Taako takes a small breath. 

“Hey, Mags, thanks for... for indulging my lame ass tonight. I wasn’t feeling too hot, you know, was kind of on a downer and... and this was the best thing you could have done for me. Thank you.”

“Jeez, it’s nothing. I had fun too. That’s what friends are for anyway, Taako, making each other feel better. You know I’ll always be here to make you feel better.”

“Yeah, that’s what friends are for,” Taako says distantly. For a moment - but then he thinks about Magnus’ eyes watching the curves of the barmaid as she walked past, remembers when Magnus died every time to save a total stranger, and knows that this time, it’s far too much to ask. “Well, uh, we better-”

“Wait, I,” Magnus says, and he almost sounds nervous. “You... I was, um...”

There’s a long pause.

“Are you sure you’re okay now?”

Taako deflates. Defeated, dejected, but not yet dead, not yet. It’s all on him tonight. He can’t rely on Magnus rushing in and saving him this time, not like this. “Absolutely, my dude. Absolutely. Hey.” He claps Magnus on the shoulder. “I owe you one.”

“Nah,” Magnus shrugs, and they walk back to the ‘Blaster together. 

 

* * *

 

The bathroom door is locked. A silencing spell has been cast over the tiles and the door. Taako is standing in front of the mirror, vial in hand, breath wheezing and labouring in a way that he had tried to hide for the past few years. Every breath hurts, rattling through his chest and sending searing pains down his trachea, and it feels like there’s a foreign object just pushing at the back of his throat, just under his gag reflex, unmoving despite every cough, insistent. 

It’s time. No more running away.

“Taako, honey, you gonna be in there long?” Lup calls under the door. “Mama needs to drop a fat log.”

Taako laughs despite himself and calls back, “I’m shaving so it’s going to be a while. Go use Barry’s bathroom.”

“Fine but if he falls out of love with me because he knows I don’t shit rainbows I’m gonna shave your eyebrows off,” she replies, and he listens to her step away, away, til she’s gone.

It’s such a shame to waste a whole bottle of perfume. He empties it out into the sink and all over himself because hell, if he wants to stink of violets then he wants to stink of violets and today’s a special day to smell good. Then he washes out the bottle with a little soap and water and tries to clean the diffuser too, even though... well, with what he’s got to replace the perfume, a little bad taste won’t hurt. Won’t hurt any worse. 

He doesn’t know how much poison is okay, so he errs for more rather than less, mixing it with water so the diffuser will spray it a little easier. The cap is screwed back on. He stands, staring down his reflection, poison spray in hand. 

For the last time he thinks about Magnus, getting a perverse kind of painful pleasure from the rush, like pressing on a bruise or picking at a scab before it’s ready. His lungs ache. He takes his shirt off.

No visible outer damage, just smooth skin, a few folds, a rib or two. It aches. He presses his cold hands against his rib cage and pushes, and it hurts like he ran a marathon, deep throbs of pulsating darkness. 

He toasts his reflection. “Bottoms up. Let’s vape this shit.” 

He squirts it into his mouth and breathes in deeply, then does it again before he can think about it with an even bigger squirt. It doesn’t hurt, and he thinks, well, this isn’t so bad, and then the pain hits, no longer a deep throb but a sharp stab through his torso and he yelps, dropping the bottle -  it burns like fire. His voice makes vague noises without his permission, and each breath feels like he swallowed lava. The pain goes deep, feels like liquid silver writhing through his aorta, and he suddenly thinks I’m going to die here. I’m dying. There’s no reset button, no redoes, they’re going to find my corpse on this bathroom floor. 

He bends in two, knees hugging to his chest, but it doesn’t help - he tries stretching out but it still feels like his lungs are crumpling - every second snaps at him but draws itself out into torturous minutes of writhing, crying out, pushing his face against the cool bathroom floor looking for relief - 

And then the first petals start coming up. They’re red at first, like normal, but the more he coughs the deeper red they are, the thicker they are, the more blood pools at their stem, until suddenly there’s a pile of petals and bloody smears all over. He keeps coughing, keeps vomiting thick slugs of red, and then the texture changes and thickens at the back of his throat and won’t come out. By now his eyes are streaming and he’s hunched over, retching, trying to get the blockage out - he digs fingers into his own throat, he can’t breathe, he can’t even cry out - his fingers tug on something, some thin slippery thing, and he tugs - and the horrible slide of it, the taste of blood, the way it slips from his throat, he almost blacks out, he’s still pulling, he can feel tendrils in his mouth -

It lands on the floor with an organic splat and Taako collapses, finally able to take deep breaths, desperately filling his lungs with air even though it’s still raw and painful. For a good few moments, his mind is elsewhere, somewhere distant. The bathroom is a white haze. This is the most alone he’s ever felt, just here, right now, on this bathroom floor, smeared with blood. He did this. Even when he was alone, he never felt it so keenly as now, not once in these one hundred or so years. 

When he comes back, he comes back to the sound of the bathroom door being battered and Lup’s voice desperately calling Taako, Taako, let me in, Taako please. He can’t. He won’t. 

His mouth is coated in blood, inside and out. 

The door literally explodes, smouldering, and Lup and Barry burst in and freeze when they see it on the floor. Taako hasn’t looked yet. 

“What happened?” 

Lup’s voice is small and weak in a way that Taako knows only comes with pure terror. 

“I had a parasite,” he tries to say. His voice is wrecked. “I dealt with it.”

She comes close to hug him but he recoils, unable to explain the sudden shudder that wracked him. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me help?”

“That... thing was inside you?” Barry says, and Taako now turns his head to look because it can’t get any worse. 

It looks a little like red seaweed, of a kind. There are two main masses of long red tendrils which end in hundreds of petals of all sizes, split in two, and Taako realises with a sick jolt that they show all the spaces of his lungs that this flower, this thing, had filled itself into. At the centre, between the two masses of petals, is a horrible knot of petals that close and open weakly, leaking blood in fat red drops, and it looks...

“I’m so sorry,” Lup says, tears streaming down her face as she hugs Taako but he feels... numb. Pained, yes, sore, but his emotions feel a little like he’s covered them in a blanket. 

He has Lup. He has Lup. He feels like this thought should warm him up, should alleviate the pain. He has Lup. He’ll always have Lup. Humans, lovers, will come and go but she’s an elf, she’s a lich, he’ll always have her. 

Experimentally, he thinks about Magnus, and feels nothing. Not the static nothing of the void fish nor the dark, pregnant nothing of night time: a repulsive nothing, an apathetic nothing. He still admires him and feels general good, friendly things about him, but now... now he couldn’t even imagine what being in love was like. 

He doesn’t need Magnus, anyway. He has Lup. 

 

It’s not long after this that things all go to shit again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: THIS IS NOT THE END!! get ready for part two, babes, take a fucking sip. 
> 
> tl:dr
> 
> taako breathes in the poison and expels the parasite from his body. lup and barry kick down the door and begin to take care of him. he no longer loves magnus romantically.


End file.
